Radiative Decay of Helium Doubly Excited States

Chien-Nan Liu
Kansas State University

Ming-Keh Chen
National Chung-Hsin University, Taiwan,

C.D. Lin
Kansas State University

A theoretical study of the radiative decay of low-lying doubly excited ¹P⁰ states of Helium in the energy region below the He+(N=2) threshold is presented. We calculated the oscillator strength from the ground state, the Auger and radiative decay rates, and the natural widths of these states. These rates are used to obtain the photon emission and metastable atom yield spectra to compare with experimental measurements, including those from Odling-Smee et al.¹ and Rubensson et al.² We showed that the lifetimes of the long-lived doubly excited states are determined by the radiative rates.

References:

1) M. K. Odling-Smee, E. Skoell, P. Hammond, and M. A. MacDonald, Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 2598 (2000).
2) J.-E. Rubensson, C. Shthe, S. Cramm, B. Kessler, S. Stranges, R. Richter, M. Alagia, and M. Coreno, Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 947 (1999).

This work was supported by the Chemical Sciences, Geosciences and Biosciences Division,
Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy.

Submitted to DAMOP/DAMP, May 2001 in London, Ontario.

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